What's new in music?

Since its previous release, MUSIC has undergone several functional and visual changes, incorporating the latest research, collaborative work with local councils and changes based on user feedback. This has resulted in some new features, performance improvements and a more robust user interface. Key features introduced in MUSIC v6 allow users to:

import external time-series flow data on source nodes, and then use MUSIC to predict water quality;

specify an initial volume for all storage nodes; in earlier versions of MUSIC you had to assume the storage was full at the beginning of a run — now MUSIC v6 provides greater flexibility;

include a maximum drawdown limit for all storage nodes with stormwater harvesting options — to preserve wetland plants, for instance;

estimate the surface area for a sedimentation basin and the inlet volume for wetland nodes, allowing you to design these stormwater features using WSUD guidelines within MUSIC;

add multiple rainwater tanks (with the same properties) in a model, improving usability;

include flow-based capture efficiency for the gross pollutant trap and generic nodes, allowing for improved handling of pollutants;

apply additional properties in the vegetated swale node, including swale capacity; this means it is easier to see the results of changing parameters, so modellers can better understand the characteristics of swales without reference to external software or calculations;

better apply treatment nodes with storage, which now have improved reuse functionality;

make use of enhanced command-line-run functionalities; and

better use flux files, which now include the time step timestamp. There are also some minor file format changes to improve use. Files are saved to .csv.

MUSIC-link can be found in the latest version of MUSIC. MUSIC-link streamlines the process for assessing the compliance of water sensitive designs submitted by the development sector against council’s specific guidelines. It generates efficiencies in the development process by not only providing very specific modelling parameters to designers, but also speeding the assessment process and thus saving councils valuable time.

Using MUSIC-link, developers can readily access council’s requirements to design stormwater systems using MUSIC, and councils can automatically generate reports from MUSIC to review the performance of proposed stormwater designs, to check for compliance.